Clermont-Ferrand: 8 Things to Know About One of France’s “Best Places to Live”

My friend Michael recently alerted me to a new article on TheLocal.fr (a great source of info for expats and tourists in France). It’s all about a new survey by L’Express which places Clermont-Ferrand at #4 among the “Best Places to Live in France “(outside Paris), and it follows on the heels of another article on TheLocal extolling the virtues of the town.

Michael and I share an interest in Clermont-Ferrand, since we worked together there for several years as expats in the global headquarters of the Groupe Michelin. We know there are a lot of stereotypesassociated with this urban zone of almost 500,000 inhabitants – it’s not really that well known, even among other French people -- but we know, too, that it has some extraordinary advantages. I don’t think either of us was surprised to find our “adopted” home in the list of “France’s best places”.

Here, then, is my own list of reasons why this city in the deep heart of France is such an attractive place to live:

Le Figaro studied the list of patents issued in France in 2015, among other indicators of “innovation”, and found (to their evident surprise) that Clermont-Ferrand comes in at number seven nationally. All the other “usual suspects” – Alcatel, Renault, L’Oreal, and others – are located on the west side of Paris. And why would such a town in the center of the country count for 325 patents? Almost all of them came from the fact that …

#2 – It hosts an industrial powerhouse that’s rich in history

Of France’s 30 biggest companies in the CAC 40 Stock Index, only 2 have headquarters outside Paris and its suburbs. One is Arcelor-Mittal, the steel and mining giant, with its siège social in Luxembourg. The other? The Group Michelin, which goes back and forth with Bridgestone in claiming its place as the world’s #1 tire manufacturer.

The company has been in Clermont-Ferrand since its founding by Andre and Edouard Michelin in 1889. It’s a business that has been driven by amazing technical advances throughout its rich history – the first dismountable pneumatic tire in 1891, the first radial tire in 1946, the only tires to be installed on America’s space shuttles, and hundreds of “firsts” in motor sports and racing. (Michael and I can attest, too, that its one of the best-run companies anyone could ever have the opportunity to work for!)

The Michelin Brothers

Bibendum - the "Michelin Man"

Michelin’s influence on the modern history of Clermont-Ferrand is legendary – I have an acquaintance, a 3rd-generation employee of the company, who says proudly that he was born in a Michelin hospital, raised in a house owned by Michelin, in a family that shopped in Michelin stores and went to Michelin doctors. Almost every vestige of that old paternalism is gone, and the company’s industrial presence in town is greatly reduced now – but it’s still one of the most recognized and most important elements of life in this part of the Auvergne. The headquarters campus in the Place des Carmes looked like a scene from a Dickens novel when I first arrived there in 1997, but it has been systematically updated over the last 20 years and today it is an appropriately sleek and impressive campus for a massive global business.

Today it has 35,000 students studying in all the fields you’d expect from a university, although it’s becoming particularly noted as a center for medical research. Almost 5,000 of these students come from foreign countries, so the school adds a distinctively young and international air to the culture of Clermont-Ferrand.

(I have a particular interest in this since I’m from Oklahoma, and Blaise Pascal is a “sister school” of the University of Oklahoma, with several exchange students every year. When we first moved to France, you can imagine my surprise when I pulled up behind a weather-beaten Renault Clio bearing a “Boomer Sooner” bumper sticker. And when my son walked through the Place de Jaude wearing his T-shirt from the Oklahoma City Thunder, a guy stepped aside from an approaching group of students to give him a nod and say “Thunder Up, dude!”)

#4 The city hosts the second-most important Film Festival in France

Of course, the most famous film festival in France is the annual big event down in Cannes…but the annual Festival du Court-Metrage (International Short Film Festival)brings around 160,000 people to town every February – producers, directors, buyers for TV networks and movie houses, critics, and lovers of the art form known as “the R&D department of the cinema.” This year was the 40th edition.

La Jetee, HQ of the film festival

It’s a “gateway” event – films shown here often go on to feed other major festivals like the one at Sundance, and the auteurs who create short films for this occasion go on to produce and direct the kind of features that get shown at Cannes.

Jardin Le Coq

#5 Clermont-Ferrand is a great base for exploring the rest of France

One of the most surprising aspects of our expat life in France was just how central our adopted home in the Auvergne turned out to be. (By way of analogy: France is roughly the same size as the American state of Texas, and Clermont-Ferrand is centrally positioned about where you would find the mid-point between San Antonio and Austin.)

It’s at the intersection of several major high-speed autoroutes – Paris is 4 or 5 hours to the north, but you can be on the beaches at Cap d’Agde on the Mediterranean, in Geneva on the Swiss border, or in Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast in about the same amount of time. (And places like Barcelona are not that much farther away!)

Sadly, there’s still no direct TGV high-speed train service (the debates rage on), but the busy train station does provide regular service to most of the rest of France; the airport at Aulnat has multiple flights every day to Paris, and occasional service to Amsterdam, London, and some other cities.

We took advantage of this central location to travel aggressively both times we lived in Clermont-Ferrand. It’s easy to leave on a Friday evening, spend 2 nights in Paris or Lyon or Bordeaux and be back in time for work on Monday morning.

#6 This is a spectacularly beautiful part of France.

I never got tired of looking out a conference room window at the volcanic Puy Pariou or walking from Clermont-Ferrand’s great cathedral down the Rue de Gras toward the spectacular Puy de Dome, one of the most iconic symbols of central France. That backdrop – the chain of 80 or so ancient extinct volcanoes that rise behind the city, the plateau of Gergovie looming to the south – make this one of the most instantly recognizable urban skylines in France.

Mont Dore in the Cantal

All of that means Clermont-Ferrand is a gateway to some of the best “wild” spaces in the country. Whether your thing is jumping off a mountain top on a parasail, hiking along waterfalls in the deep gorges of the region’s rivers, biking on twisty mountain roads, or camping in a pine forest so dark that day seems like night, you’ll likely find what you want in this part of France’s Massif Central.

#7 Clermont has a vibrant city center.

It’s true that Clermont-Ferrand has something of an industrial character once you’re outside the city’s center – but true, too, that its medieval quarter is large and well-preserved. As in so many European towns, there are places where you can walk down a small street and touch the walls on both sides. There are half-timbered houses and a few Renaissance gems. And, as everywhere else in the Auvergne, many of the buildings are built of the characteristic gray/black lava blocks quarried from local volcanic sites, all giving the city a distinctively somber cast.

The beating commercial heart of the city, the Place de Jaude is a vast open space surrounded by stores, cinemas, and restaurants. On any reasonably nice day (even Sundays when most stores are closed) crowds of people stroll the square, which is book-ended by the 17th-century Church of Saint-Pierre-des-Minimes at one end and by a multi-story, contemporary shopping complex at the other. This is where people gather to celebrate, to party, to learn, or just to get out of the house and into the company of other people.

The Place de Jaude

#8 Oh, the history!

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m enthralled by history in general and by French history particularly, so you won’t be surprised to know that the long record of events in this region stretches at least back to the Iron Age.

Vercingetorix

The Romans came through here – in fact, the only battle Julius Caesar ever lostin ancient Gaul was to an Arvernii chieftain named Vercingetorix on the plateau de Gergovie south of town. Vikings invaded in their time.

So yes, there’s a lot of history here. Check out the Bargoin Museum on rue Ballainvillier for a dazzling archeological overview of the long chain of human habitation and the earth-shaking events that took place here over the centuries.

Still not convinced?

Clermont-Ferrand is a welcoming center for expats. Michelin usually has dozens of families from all over the globe on assignment in town, and the thousands of foreign students at Blaise Pascal add to the mix. There’s an international women’s society that meets regularly, an international branch for schoolchildren at the Ecole Massillon, and even a small Anglican congregation with a full-time rector at Christchurch in Royat.

The city has a growing national reputation as a place to find progressive music, and it’s easy to find movies in English at several of the city’s theaters (look for the label “VO” for version originale). If you like sports, check out the ASM’s professional rugby team – national champions of Francein 2010, and when they won again last year, 40,000 people gathered in the Place de Jaude to celebrate. Seismologists in the local observatory noted a sharp spike in their records at the exact moment the final whistle blew in Paris!

The most professionally-produced overview I’ve seen of Clermont-Ferrand is called “48 Hours in Clermont”. It follows a young woman as she walks around the city’s most iconic sights – the medieval center, parasailers flying off the volcanic peak of the Puy-de-Dome, and the great gathering space of the Place de Jaude downtown.

You’ll also get a glimpse of an ASM rugby game (that’s their flag in the grip of the statue of Vercingetorix – they won the national championship of France in 2010). Glimpses, too, of the Cooperative de Mai (a hot concert venue) and the interiors of some of Clermont’s main museums. Highly recommended as a first glimpse of everything I’m talking about in this post...

All of this is to say that, for us and for many of our closest friends, it’s not surprising to find Clermont-Ferrand on a list of “Best Places to Live in France”. It’s not Paris, but for anyone looking for all the amenities of city life in a spectacular natural setting, this is the place to be!

Have you visited Clermont-Ferrand or any of the other “best places to live in France”? What were your impressions? Take a second to tell us your experience in the comments section below – and please share this post with someone else who might be thinking about living or traveling in central France.

3 thoughts on “Clermont-Ferrand: 8 Things to Know About One of France’s “Best Places to Live””

So thorough, but not overly dense or heavy with obscure details. This descriptive picture of the city Clermont-Ferrard makes me want to remember the name and to visit for sure. I’d have to review my French, but I think it would be well worth it.

Thanks very much for writing, Wendy. There was a time (20+ years ago) when you would have needed a fair amount of French to get around Clermont-Ferrand, but that’s much less true today (thanks in large part to the substantial flow of International business travelers and foreign university students in town). I hope you do get the chance to go!

What a turn out with 40,000 people gathered in the Place de Jaude to celebrate their champions – that is quite astounding. This is such a great informative article covering so much of living in Clermont-Ferrand.